The great charity shop con

Since I was 13, I've been buying from charity shops. For years, I was teased about my compulsive need to stop at every "chazzer" and have a rummage, but I just couldn't resist temptation.

As a fan of eclectic and vintage clothing, the buzz was never knowing what I might find. Charity shops have been better to me with their gifts than many a boyfriend.

A Dior original New Look dress circa 1949, a Schiaparelli evening dress, a Gieves Forties hand-tailored wool and silk suit, a pink chiffon Marilyn Monroe "Happy birthday, Mr President" ball gown - these are just some of the amazing things I've found. Not to mention an enviable array of hats, designer shoes, bags, fur coats and jewellery.

I chose to buy from charity shops rather than dealers or bric a brac stores because I liked the fact the money I spent would be going towards a worthwhile cause.

I also admired the community ethos. The volunteers were happy to chat and they were free to use their own acumen to price and sell to people who couldn't afford to buy new, as I wasn't able to in my student days. But recently, things have started to change - and I have decided to no longer buy from charity shops.

First, it was modernisation. There are now even designer charity shops where you can buy outfits for hundreds of pounds - that's if there is any good stuff left, as the very best is sold on eBay to get the highest return.

I saw a pair of shoes (admittedly Gucci) for more than £100 in a charity shop in Chelsea.

The days of the bargains are no more. What we now have is a system where we give to charity in order that they can sell it back to us at twice the price.

Cashmere jumpers are cheaper at M&S and without the moth holes, and if you are after a trendy outfit, you can buy something far cheaper that's brand new from Primark.

What was once a meeting place has given way to new merchandise, Fair Trade coffee and a feeling you are paying more than at the second-hand bookshop down the road, which is having to close because of soaring business rates (charity shops get 80 per cent relief).

But what has made me think twice about the charity shop system is finding out what goes on behind the scenes.

When stuff doesn't get sold, it stacks up in the back rooms because the shops don't have the storage space. And that's when the recycling entrepreneurs step in.

Did you know only 10 per cent to 20 per cent

of the clothes we donate are sold in Britain to be worn again? The rest are offloaded to textile traders, who are making a fortune.

Many charity shops sell in bulk to businesses which are paying in weight, not quality (I weep at the thought of all that vintage going to waste).

Much of this re-selling is done abroad - in Africa, Russia and Eastern Europe - which would be fine if you knew they were getting clothing for free, but these poor people are having to pay for clothes which were given for nothing.

But my research has found that some of these items are popping up far closer to home and in far more glamorous locations - from stalls on the trendy Portobello Road in West London to Top-Shop Vintage.

One stallholder I spoke to, who sells leather bags, shoes and belts, admitted much of her stock comes via recycling merchants in the Midlands, who buy second-hand clothes by the ton from charity shops.

Whatever she doesn't sell, she then passes on as a job lot to a TopShop buyer late on a Sunday afternoon. So a pair of shoes you have donated to charity could end up on the racks of the Oxford Street megastore being sold as 'vintage'.

When I asked if she thought it was wrong to be selling an item which was donated to charity, she just shrugged.

"No, it's a win-win situation. I make a couple of grand a week, the recyclers make a few hundred from us and the charity makes a bit, too," she said. "It's all profit and at least this way, the leather can be recycled."

She's certainly right about one thing: it is all about profit, but for the wrong people.

I have never been one to sell my unwanted clothes on eBay, but I might consider it after tuning in to an investigation on Radio 4 recently which highlighted the profits being made from unwanted charity shop stock.

World affairs correspondent Mike Wooldridge tracked charity cast-offs from the people of Mansfield, in Nottinghamshire, to Lusaka, the Zambian capital, where the trade in second-hand clothes is booming.

The textile exporters behind this were East Midlands based Savannah Rags. The company's accounts for 2004 show the business was healthy enough for the three directors to receive £100,000 each.

Sometimes, the charity never even sees the clothes you donate. In some towns, the charity textile banks you find in supermarket car parks are managed by private contractors.

They empty them, sort and sell the clothes, and pay the charity a lump sum (which is inevitably much smaller than the worth of the clothes on the market).

No wonder one shop manager told me: "Clothes donated to some of those bins never see the inside of a charity shop."

Gerald Cemmell is managing director of the recycling firm Ragtex UK, which collects 95 tons of old clothes a week from 200 recycling banks in the Leicester area. Some of these carry the Scope logo and, for each of these banks, Ragtex makes a donation of £100 a year to the charity.

"Charities have a real problem knowing what to do with surplus clothes," he says. "That's where we come in. We sort and grade the clothes, package them and sell them abroad where they are really needed, such as Pakistan and southern Africa.

"The charities get something out of it and so do people in poor countries. Everyone's happy."

Like many charities, Scope also sells off damaged clothes and anything unsuitable for sale in their shops to textile traders at an agreed price per kilogram.

"Scope will extract the best price they can to fund our work," said a spokesman. "Nothing of value is destroyed or wasted."

"Though much of the clothing donated to charity shops is of a good wearable quality, charities are not able to sell the majority of items in their shops.

"They have two choices. They can sell on their clothing to second-hand traders, so raising funds for the charity's core activities.

"The other choice is to pay a waste management company to take the wearable and recyclable clothes the shops cannot sell and dump them. I think many would find this morally and economically indefensible.

"By selling on clothes to the secondhand clothing trade, charities are helping to support thousands of jobs here and in developing countries.

"It also enables people living abroad to buy good quality clothes at affordable prices, which would otherwise be unobtainable. And, of course, there are environmental benefits."

I do understand something has to happen to the unwanted stock to stop it ending up as landfill. But even so, there is something so cynical about all this which unnerves me.

A spokesman for Oxfam reassures me that clothes, accessories and books are recycled between stores before they are packed up to be exported.

It also runs its own recycling plant in Huddersfield called Wastesaver in a bid to cut out the middle men.

But there is no doubt big bucks are being made. Such is the high price of second-hand clothes in the marketplace, the whole system is ripe for shady dealings and scams.

Not surprisingly, there has been a spate of bogus collection rackets trying to cash in. In some areas, cowboy traders have tried to hijack textile banks.

Another scam is organising a house-tohouse collection, claiming it's for a good cause, though it is more likely to be a money-making scheme. According to Lekha Klouda, of the Association of Charity Shops, these scams are becoming increasingly common.

"People come out of the woodwork because there are profits to be made. Our advice is always check for a charity number," she said.

Lekha stressed that the textile traders who work with charities are vigorously vetted and have to meet strict legislation.

"There is an awful lot of clothing given which cannot be sold because it's torn or stained. This then gets into the recycling chain, which is a good thing, and money is raised in the process," she said.

One recycler I spoke to, who didn't want to be named, also defended the system.

"I get paid £6 to £7 a wheelie bin for emptying it once a week. You have to understand that charity shops get given a lot of junk," he said.

"They pay me to take it away, I pay sorters to find anything I can sell on, such as the brass off a candlestick, and then what's left ends up on landfill sites, at a cost to me of £18 a ton."

Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned from all this. If we were more discerning about what we donate and recycled our clothes rather than throw them out each season, there wouldn't be this mountain of garments to deal with.

If you put things in the back of the wardrobe for long enough, they always come back into fashion.

In the end, charities are fund-raising machines and they want to be able to raise as much money as possible. But if they want to continue to enjoy the support of the community, they must give something back.

In charity shops there should be a constant sale rail for people who cannot afford the high prices - £40 for a jacket, even if it is a label, is still too much, as was the rail of raggy T-shirts, all priced at £12, I saw last week.

I have even seen a designer shirt for sale in a Red Cross shop that was more expensive than a new version from a store. Charity books can be the same price as brand new ones.

Oxfam tells me that if I want a bargain, I should head to the Dalston Supersaver store in

North London, where prices are still low.

It has the highest turnover of any Oxfam in the country, which says everything.

If all charity shops cut their prices, the chazzers would be back and the stock would fly off the shelves, not out of the back door to the middle men.